Welcome to MarketWatch’s live blog of the stock market. We’re kicking it off before the jobless claims data on Thursday. Ahead: Yellen testimony and the market reacts to Cisco. Want to point something out? We’d love to hear from you in the comments or directly at lmandaro@marketwatch.com.

Here’s a link to the jobless claims report. The number of people who applied for new unemployment benefits edged down by 2,000 to 339,000 in the week ended Nov. 9. That was a little higher than forecasts but processing problems still may be mucking up the numbers.

That low hum you hear in the background is the ongoing fight between the bulls and bears. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average notched another pair of record closes Wednesday. Most recently — though pretty reluctantly — appearing in the bulls’ camp: Bond guru Jeff Gundlach.

The DoubleLine Capital co-founder told Reuters: Wall Street is “the only game in town.”

However, Gundlach is hesitant to pour fresh money into U.S. stocks because, in his words, he doesn’t like “buying high”. Read our full write-up.

Fed’s Plosser lashes into the the central bank’s dual mandate to ensure price stability and maximize employment. He is known as a hawk, so it’s unclear how much this is a surprise. But he’s not pulling any punches.

A check on the other markets: Oil is drifting lower. Weekly supply data comes out this morning, delayed a day because of Monday’s Veterans Day holiday, when government offices were closed. The Nymex December contract is down 0.6% at $93.29 a barrel. Brent oil, however, is rising on support from potential disruption issues in Libya.

It’s also shaping up to be an ugly morning for retailer Kohl’s Corp., which is off 9% ahead of the bell after it reported a drop in third-quarter profit and revenue that missed expectations. It probably didn’t help that the company also cut its full year per-share profit outlook.

The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., was feeling some discomfort as well,with shares off 1.6%. Wal-Mart’s third-quarter revenue of $115.7 billion fell short of the $117.05 billion expected by Wall Street’s finest, while profit beat expectations by a penny. Stay up to date with the latest results at the MarketWatch Earnings Wall.

DING DING. What a lukewarm opening. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has veered between a gain of about 9 points and a 14 point drop. The S&P 500 is flat at 1,783. The Nasdaq Composite is 10 points lower at 3,956.

In case you missed it, here’s the wrap of Yellen’s remarks released late Wednesday. The money quote:

For these reasons, the Federal Reserve is using its monetary policy tools to promote a more robust recovery. A strong recovery will ultimately enable the Fed to reduce its monetary accommodation and reliance on unconventional policy tools such as asset purchases. I believe that supporting the recovery today is the surest path to returning to a more normal approach to monetary policy.

“She has expressed greater concern about the economic consequences of unemployment, a stronger conviction in the Fed’s ability to stimulate job growth and a greater willingness to tolerate a little more inflation in order to reduce unemployment more quickly. Until recently, her emphasis on unemployment would likely have disqualified her for the job, and it has already inspired opposition from some Senate Republicans and investors concerned that she would not be sufficiently vigilant in guarding against inflation.”

Checking in on the main indexes: The market action has been fairly mild, but the indexes have lifted off their session lows as the Yellen hearing has progressed. And they’re holding around their session highs. Still, that just means up about 25 points for the Dow right now, up about 4 points for the S&P 500. Nasdaq is still down, losing about 4 points.

I like this line as well in that NY Times profile of Yellen: “Ms. Yellen is also a more assertive leader than Mr. Bernanke and appears less averse to conflict.” Perhaps that line could have been written as: Yellen grew up in New York, while Bernanke grew up in the South, where folks can be more polite.

Stocks are now strengthening further, although the Yellen hearing seems rather free of fireworks or big surprises. Dow is now up about 41 points, though that’s still less than 0.3%. S&P 500 is up 5 points, Nasdaq down 3 points.

She said traditional valuation methods wouldn’t suggest that stock prices are “bubble like.” I believe that she allowed that the equity risk premium is somewhat elevated. And she said there is no federal role to support stocks.

Switching over to the issue of market breadth… Miller Tabak had an interesting point during yesterday’s upside reversal, pointing out a low percentage of S&P 500 stocks trading at new 52-week highs. Here’s a chart from that firm.

Yellen’s mention of the equity risk premium reminded me of something that I read from Jim Kee over at South Texas Money Management. He wrote recently that the market is “neither cheap nor expensive.” Here’s a more full quote:

“I listened to a compelling call last week from my old group at Credit Suisse that uses a tremendous amount of current and historic company data in order to derive an “equity risk premium.” That in turn is used to gauge whether market valuation levels are high or low relative to history, given the cash flows that companies are generating. Remarkably, that measure has now converged exactly onto historical averages, which is to say that the market is neither cheap nor expensive.”

Fort Pitt’s Forrest also has weighed in this week on Twitter. She’s negative on social media plays in general, saying you “shouldn’t give a tweet” about them. Instead, focus on stocks that actually get revenue from users, she said in blog post.

An interesting tidbit of news: New corporate bond sales passed $1 trillion this week for U.S. marketed investment-grade issuers. Companies are clearly rushing to sell debt while rates are low. That’s the fastest pace of issuance on record for the market, according to data released Thursday by Dealogic. (Read more on that here.)

How much does the corporate bond market affect the equity side? John Higgins of Capital Economics was out with a research note Wednesday talking about how rising corporate bond yields could hit equities. From the report:

“The earnings yield of a stock market index should be closely related to the average real yield of long-dated bonds issued by its constituents. In the US, we think the latter is likely to rise significantly during our forecast window. Although the gap between the earnings yield and the average real bond yield is currently more positive than usual, upward pressure on the latter is set to undermine the valuation case for equities over the next few years.”

Senators “seemed charmed by Yellen,” reports MarketWatch’s Greg Robb in his article about the hearing. The story also says: “Yellen tried several times to ease concerns that bubbles are forming.” Read the whole thing here.

In the wake of the Yellen testimony, gold has settled higher for the first time in six sessions.

While the remarks by Yellen, currently the Fed’s vice chairwoman, were hardly surprising, it appeared sufficient to spark a round of short covering in the wake of a heavy string of losses for the yellow metal, reports MarketWatch’s Myra Saefong.

In case you missed it, here’s what Yellen said on gold… word for word, thanks to a Federal News Service transcript.

“Well, I don’t think anybody has a very good model of what makes gold prices go up or down. But certainly it is — it is an asset that people want to hold when they’re very fearful about potential financial market catastrophe or economic troubles and (tail ?) risks. And when there is financial market turbulence, often we see gold prices rise as people flee into them.”

She also said: “I haven’t seen a lot of models that have been successful in predicting them.”

In after-hours news, well-known investors are disclosing positions, such as Carl Icahn noting increased holdings in Navistar Internationalas of Sept. 30. Here’s the full story for Icahn and Navistar, the commercial truck maker.

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